Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) is facing mounting pressure and calls for her to resign over the her administration’s governance of industrial pipelines, as Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers yesterday brought more accusations of falsehood against the government.
Following the revelation that the Kaohsiung Mass Rapid Transit Bureau had invited LCY Chemical Corp to attend a meeting on the investigation of pipelines before the construction of the light-rail system in 2012, KMT Legislator Lin Kuo-cheng (林國正) yesterday presented more documents to back up his accusation that the city government has long known about the existence of the company’s pipeline.
LCY Chemical is suspected of being responsible for the deadly blast last week after prosecutors reportedly found a hole in its pipeline carrying propene. The city government had said the pipeline was not in its database.
Photo: Taipei Times
Lin yesterday further said that LCY Chemical has been paying for the use of its pipeline stations since 2012, the year the Kaohsiung City Regulations on City-owned Property Management and Autonomy (高雄市市有財產管理自治條例) were promulgated.
The regulations require the installation of pipelines for public use — such as for the conveyance of water, petroleum and natural gas, which would indicate a need to use the city’s immovable properties — to be sanctioned and charged by the city government.
According to Lin, LCY Chemical registered the use of and paid for two pipeline stations in the past two years: one at the Kaohsiung Wharf and the other in Dashe District (大社), the site of its Kaohsiung factory.
Lin said since the public works bureau is responsible for charging for the use of the roads under which the pipelines are buried, according to the city government’s budget record, it would be impossible that the bureau did not know about the presence of LCY Chemical’s pipelines.
He also faulted the bureau for what he termed its failure to take on the responsibility of management while charging for the use of the roads.
While it is unclear why LCY Chemical’s pipelines carrying propene were bound by the regulations governing the installation of pipelines for public utilities, another KMT legislator alleged that the public works bureau had known that LCY Chemical’s pipelines carried propene and ethylene years before the disaster.
The legislator, who requested anonymity, provided photocopied documents from the city government’s public works bureau to the Chinese-language Apple Daily yesterday, showing that the bureau had information about Taiwan Polypropylene Co Ltd pipelines and the materials they carried in its database as early as 2005.
Taiwan Polypropylene was acquired by LCY Chemical in 2006.
Taiwan Polypropylene had also paid for the use of the roads where it buried pipelines from 2005 to 2007, the unnamed lawmaker said, according to the Apple Daily report.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tuan Yi-kang (段宜康) countered the allegation on Facebook yesterday, saying that the pipeline information cited as evidence by the anonymous KMT legislator indicated pipelines belonging to the Taiwan Polypropylene factory in the Dashe Petrochemical Industrial Park.
“The pipelines linked Taiwan Polypropylene’s factory in the industrial park to CPC Corp, Taiwan’s (台灣中油) No. 5 Naphtha Cracker. They are not the propene pipelines that [are thought to have] caused the explosions on Kaisyuan Road in Cianjhen District (前鎮) this time,” Tuan wrote. “The KMT legislator made a false accusation.”
Meanwhile, the KMT’s Kaohsiung Office held a press conference condeming Chen and her team.
Greater Kaohsiung City Council Speaker Hsu Kun-yuan (許崑源) said the city government has been charging firms for “the use of the pipelines,” but is now passing the buck to the companies.
He called on Chen, the fire bureau director and the environmental protection bureau director to resign.
Separately, Chen approved resignations tendered by the deputy mayor and three bureau chiefs yesterday, but said that they will leave their posts after the rescue effort has come to an end.
Deputy Mayor Wu Hong-mo (吳宏謀), Water Resources Bureau Director Lee Hsien-yi (李賢義), Public Works Bureau Director Yang Ming-jou (楊明州) and KMRT Bureau Director Chen Tsun-yung (陳存永) resigned on Thursday to be accountable for the explosions.
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